Programme

Book of abstracts

Social programme

On the evening of the first day, we will arrange a conference dinner at “Rå Sushi”, an excellent sushi (and not only sushi) restaurant in the city center. The fee for the dinner will be 350 NOK, payable at the restaurant. We recommend having cash with you, since foreign cards can occasionally be rejected by Norwegian card readers.

On the evening of the second day, we invite everybody to a “walkshop”. You cannot leave Norway without hiking in the hills, and Tromsø hills are as good a place for discussing corpus linguistics as any. We will walk to a small hill near the university (Varden). Good waterproof shoes and trousers are strongly recommended, though we will cancel the event if the weather conditions are very bad or if too much snow is still lying around.

Local

The city of Tromsø…

…boasts the world’s northernmost university and a beautiful scenery. In April, the days are already long and bright (one month remaining to the midnight sun), but nights are still dark, so chances to see northern lights still exist. The weather is usually rather warm, but snow can still be lying around. The city has an excellent science museum (right across the road from the conference venue), several other good museums (Polaria, Polar Museum, Tromsø Museum, Northern Norway Art Museum), fine opportunities for hiking in the hills (there is a cable car) and a range of other places of interest (see the website of the Tourist Information Office, which also gives some advice on accommodation).

Travel

Usually people get to Tromsø by plane (SAS or Norwegian flights). Most international flights are via Oslo, do remember that if you have registered luggage, you must collect it in Oslo and check it in once again. In Tromsø, the airport is very close to the city centre, and there are good bus connections. The Airport Express (Flybussen) stops right outside the exit from the airport building, in order to get to buses 40 and 42 take an elevator to the underground parking, cross the parking, come out of it and cross the road (don’t forget to cross the road, otherwise you’ll risk catching a bus going in an opposite direction, from the city centre).

Flybussen accepts cards, local buses (including 40 and 42) do not. You must either pay cash onboard (there is a rule that drivers should accept euro bills (not coins), but we do not know if they actually do) or buy a ticket in advance (which is significantly cheaper. Tickets can be bought, for instance, at the Narvesen kiosk at the airport. Consider buying a 24-hour ticket if you are going to make more than two rides during the day, otherwise opt for several single tickets).

Venue

UiT The Arctic University of Norway, alias Universitetet i Tromsø, alias UiTø; the Faculty of Humanities (HSL-fakultetet), room E0101. From the city centre take buses 20 or 21 to the stop called “UiT/Planetariet” (~10-15 minutes ride), then follow the signs. Wireless Internet will be available on campus.

Money

It is recommended to have a small amount of local currency (NOK) with you. While cards are accepted almost anywhere in Norway, international cards are sometimes rejected for mysterious technical reasons. In addition, see section “Travel” about paying in local buses. There are ATMs at the airport and in the city centre, and you can also withdraw small amounts of cash from your card at virtually any shop. If you want to exchange foreign cash, the best place to do that is the post office (mind working hours). Some banks can exchange currency as well. There is no currency exchange service at the airport (but there is one in Oslo).

Weather…

Contact

Questions should be directed to the organising committee at slavic.corpora@gmail.com

Call for papers

Slavicists are spoiled for choice when it comes to corpus linguistics: large and elaborate corpus resources like the Czech National Corpus and the Russian National Corpus is the norm rather than the exception for this language family. In the more recent years, electronic resources for earlier stages of the Slavic languages have appeared as well, and are steadily getting bigger and more sophisticated, giving new opportunities to Slavic historical linguists.

The members of the research project “Birds and Beasts: Shaping Events in Old Russian” (UiT The Arctic University of Norway) would like to invite papers for a conference on the use and development of such resources. We are interested both in linguistic studies using Slavic historical and/or diachronic data from electronic resources, and in more methodological papers on such resources.

The conference takes place in Tromsø April 21-22 2015, and will also include the official launch of the Tromsø OCS and Old Russian Treebank (TOROT), a dependency treebank of approximately 300 000 words including Old Church Slavonic, Old Russian and Middle Russian texts.

Abstracts will be reviewed by a scientific committee, and should be submitted to slavic.corpora@gmail.com. The abstract should not exceed 500 words including figures, tables and references. The deadline for submitting an abstract is February 1. Notice of acceptance will be given by February 20. There will be no conference fee.